Somalia's powerful religious group on Thursday warned that a UN Security Council decision to deploy peacekeepers will multiply "the number of graves" in the country as it threatened to step up a conflict against the weak Somali government.
As the country teetered on the brink of an all-out war, Islamic forces exchanged heavy artillery fire with rival militia, backed by Ethiopian forces in central Somalia, killing at least one pro-government fighter and wounding others, commanders said.
"The decision to bring foreign troops into Somalia will spark a new crisis in Somalia. I tell you that this UN endorsement will massively increase casuality figures and the number of graves in this country," religious movement spokesman Sheikh Abdurahim Muddey told AFP. "Again we say that we will never accept the deployment of foreign troops ... We will make sure that we make good our warning," he added.
The group's deputy security chief, Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, called the Council "an American stooge" which he said was advancing Washington's sinister schemes. "Let America do whatever it wants, everything the UN approves is an aggression against us and we are ready to defend our religion and land against enemy invasion," Robow said.
"We tell the peacekeepers that ahead of them are hand-propelled grenades and other artillery," he explained. "We promised to fight until we die and that promise is still alive today."
Muddey spoke hours after the Security Council unanimously authorised the deployment of east African peacekeepers in Somalia and eased a 14-year-old arms embargo, despite vehement opposition from the group - accused of ties with terrorism groups - and some countries in the region.
The internationally backed but largely powerless transitional government, which has been further weakened by infighting, called for the immediate deployment of the force called IGASOM.
"Any delay can cause negative consequence," Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi told a press conference in Nairobi. "This resolution is a tool to be properly used in order to prevent any further expansion of terrorist actions in the Horn of Africa and the African continent," said Gedi, accusing Eritrea of being the "only government engaged in the destabilisation of Somalia in terms of provision of forces, weapons and ammunition."
Radical Islamic clerics have vowed to wage a jihad, or "holy war", against any foreign troops in Somalia, including those from Ethiopia already in the country to bolster the government. The UN resolution urged both sides to resume "without delay" peace talks which collapsed last month.
Rival commanders confirmed the midnight clashes in the central Somali town of Bandiradley, about 630 kilometers (395 miles) north of Mogadishu, in which a pro-government fighters was killed. Witnesses reported rival fighters reinforcing defences, digging in for a full-scale conflict.
The group, the two-year-old government and its Ethiopian allies have been bracing for all-out war for weeks in the lawless Horn of Africa nation that many fear could engulf the entire region in a bloody conflict.
Some diplomats and the respected International Crisis Group think tank agree and had called for the 1992 arms embargo to be strengthened as well as for pressure on both sides to return to peace talks. But the African Union has already endorsed the proposed 8,000-strong force of troops from the seven-nation east African regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
The Security Council said the planned mission should exclude troops from "states that border Somalia", specifically ruling out contributions from Ethiopia and Kenya. Diplomats said Uganda had offered troops.
"We are not classifying foreign forces, let them be from neighbouring countries or faraway others, we affirm that we are in the final stage of fighting against any deployed force," Robow added.
There has been no national governing authority in Somalia since 1991, when dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was ousted. There followed 15 years of factional bloodletting that prompted botched military and humanitarian intervention by the UN and the United States that was forced to pull out in 1995 after around 140 UN peacekeepers and 18 US special forces were killed.
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